🚦Semiotic Attitude
What Lenore might have in mind by Se, Si, Ne, Ni, Te, Ti, Fe, and Fi is different ways of understanding how signs relate to meanings--or rather, "what signs mean".
Semiotics is the systematic study of sign processes and the communication of meaning. In semiotics, a sign is defined as anything that communicates intentional and unintentional meaning or feelings to the sign's interpreter.
Signs and meanings
What we mean here by a sign is: anything that you can observe; anything that you could possibly interpret.
What we mean by a meaning is: whatever you understand a sign as indicating, standing for, pointing to, etc; any interpretation that you give a sign.
For example, a word is a sign. Dictionaries try to document what words mean.
A cloud is a sign: a cloud can be a sign that it will rain soon. In this case, the rain is the meaning.
If a person's eye twitches, that's a sign: a sign that that person is nervous.
Attitudes toward signs and meanings
The idea, then, is that each of those Lenore-attitudes is a way in which you can attach a meaning to a sign--or even a condition that you need satisfied or else you view the sign as "meaningless".
Vast amounts of philosophical writing have been devoted to arguing that other people's ways of interpreting signs are "meaningless". For example, the Logical Positivist movement tried to show that a proposition is meaningless unless there is an empirical test to see if it's true; some even said that the meaning is that empirical test. William Blake spoke of seeing a "world in a grain of sand": a radically different way of finding meaning in things. Joe Friday wanted "just the facts": when someone told him interpretations that he didn't think were reliable, he tried to sift out all but the meanings he could use as a solid basis for making decisions according to the law.
On the exegesis proposed here, what Lenore has done is come up with a set of Semiotic Attitudes that people depend on as a way of orienting themselves in life. Each, used on its own as a way to find meaning in life, leads you to carve out a life for yourself but also eventually gets you into trouble that you can't get out of by continuing to orient yourself with that attitude. Each Semiotic Attitudes has opposing attitudes that nullify it: opposite attitudes each call the other's ways of understanding things "meaningless". But there are other, more complementary relations between different Semiotic Attitudes.
Lenore's stuff, then, would be a conceptual vocabulary for consciously shifting between Semiotic Attitudes and also understanding Rhetorical Clashes between people's attempts to persuade, understand, and be understood by others.
A sign along the road
Imagine a road sign showing an arrow going up and then curving to the right. What does it mean?
On this page, we'll attempt to describe each Semiotic Attitudes as a way of singling out some of all the possible meanings of the sign as its "true" meaning. To get ready to do that, first we'll explore that vast set of all the the sign's meanings.
A whole bunch of meanings
The sign means that the road ahead curves to the right.
The sign means that someone wants you to think that the road ahead curves to the right.
The sign means that you had better slow down, you moron! You're driving at 60 mph and you could easily run off the road when you reach the curve.
The sign means that the road ahead is not any of the other ways that the road could be, which would be indicated either by different signs or by the absence of a sign. For example, the road ahead does not curve left nor does it just go straight.
It's a "sign" that Ned Jarrett, the Riverside County road engineer from 1960-1987, examined this section of road and determined that it needed a sign.
It's a "sign" of the way we interpret "up" as meaning "forward" when mapping directions on a level surface to directions on a vertical surface.
It's a "sign" of the fact that the surface of the Earth is, in mathematical terms, "orientable": you can use an arrow in one place as a reference point for distinguishing directions in other places.
It's a "sign" of the economy that hires people to build roads so they can drive their cars to places where they earn money to pay for the cars that need roads built.
It's a "sign" of people's need to be physically safe when traveling, and their desire to help others avoid the danger of the upcoming curve.
Four Semiotic Attitudes
S: What is the proximate meaning of the sign? Most of the interpretations above strayed pretty far from the sign, into areas that seem quite speculative. From an S attitude, the meaning of the sign is kept as close to the sign as possible, so there is very little room for varying interpretations.
N: What are all the meanings of the sign? From an N attitude, the sign means everything that it means: proximate meanings as well as distant or speculative meanings, possible meanings as well as actual meanings--everything whatsoever that led to the appearance of the sign or is connected with the sign in any way whatsoever. Any one meaning that you focus on is never the whole story.
T: What distinction does the sign indicate? From a T attitude, every meaning is a distinction within some space of possibilities. A sign is something that tells you which of those possibilities is actual.
F: What need does the sign reflect? From an F attitude, a sign is meaningful insofar as it shows us a living need or desire. Thus the road sign reflects people's need to be physically safe as well as their desire to travel along that road.
Introverted and extraverted forms
Se: Given the totality of what I am experiencing right now, what does the sign suggest to me right now? If someone is trying to trick me and I sense that, then the sign means that they are trying to trick me. If things are peaceful and the sign means that the road curves ahead, then I will sense that when I see the sign. There is no point in trying to interpret a sign before you get to it.
Si: What is the stable meaning of the sign? What proximate meaning can that sign have so I could trust it in other contexts? For the sign to have any meaning at all, the meaning must be defined independently of the context, and the sign must reliably relate to that meaning regardless of context.
Te: For the sign to have meaning, the meaning must be susceptible to empirical test. You must have criteria that are defined independently of the particular circumstance and interpretation, and then apply the criteria "objectively". The road sign means that if you apply the criteria for what counts as a right-curving road vs. a straight road vs. a left-curving road, the particular road ahead will fall into the right-curving category. We choose those criteria because they call for different responses. Thus the "slow down" example above is a good illustration of a Te interpretation. From the Te perspective, all signs make empirical distinctions that map to different responses.
Ti: What underlying causal order (if any) explains why the sign appears here in its environment? The sign is a part whose "meaning" is its place in the whole: the way in which its existence supports and is supported by the existence of the other parts. That way in which everything fits together is what we mean by "underlying causal order". No sign has any meaning apart from actual contexts in which it occurs. The same kind of causal order manifests itself differently from context to context. To understand what the sign means, you need to compare situations where that sign occurs with situations where other signs occur (or no sign), and see how they are similar and different. Gradually, the way in which the sign emerges from its environment will become clearer and clearer.
Fe: What network of social obligations, where people found ways to meet their needs together, led to the creation of the sign? The road sign suggests the shared enterprise where many people drive on the same roads, face the same dangers, and try to help each other out for shared benefits. The road sign is thus an invitation to participate in this shared convention of using the road. If I respond by driving along the road and slowing down a bit, I am indebted to the sign maker. Because I participate in this network of mutual obligations, whenever I drive, I never drive alone.
Fi: What intrinsic human need is manifest in the sign? In the case of the road sign, the intrinsic human needs include the need to be physically safe, the need to participate in the world beyond one's home (creating the need to drive a car), perhaps the need for sensory excitement and engagement (among people who like to take the curve fast), and no doubt many other needs, varying from person to person. These needs are intrinsic to each individual; they exist regardless of the social framework that led someone to place the sign.
Ne: What is the process of which the sign is a part--the process that had a past that led to the sign, and that will have a future that the sign will contribute to? An earlier part of that process is Ned Jarrett's survey work back in the 1960's. That survey work (and the present sign and road) are part of a process of road-building that took shape in the United States when the automobile was invented and became popular. The sign will lead cars to Legoland, where people will participate in a process of educating children and sharing values. From the Ne perspective, you can always broaden the context to change the meaning. The real meaning is rooted in the actual process, even though you can barely know anything about that process.
Ni: What are all the possible ways of interpreting the sign, and what leads us to select one interpretation over another? What is the basis of interpretation or basis of selection? Ni is illustrated by the interpretation in terms of the use of an arrow pointing up to mean forward. That is not the only possible way of making road signs. Every distinction to be communicated about road direction could just as well be communicated if a downward-pointing arrow meant forward. What does our choice to represent forward by an upward-pointing arrow say about our attitudes toward travel and our assumptions about the spaces in which we travel? Whatever basis of interpretation you choose, you leave out other possible interpretations. For example, the fact that the sign is two-dimensional illustrates how we are ignoring the hilliness of the road: a reflection of our purpose--to reach our destination. If the purpose of the sign had been to map the geography of the area, a completely different way of selecting and representing information would have been used.
Note that some of the above Semiotic Attitudes are a bit silly to apply to a road sign. Few would apply a Ti perspective to a road sign, because it's clear that the sign is artificially created to serve an Si/Te approach to sign-making, and we all understand the value of understanding the sign according to those attitudes. Hopefully the descriptions give you an idea of the different attitudes, though, and how they can play out in a variety of other circumstances.
See also: Semiotically Disoriented. For an idea about how the introverted and extraverted attitudes are different (and what each has in common within its own group), see Orienting.
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